And Their Children After Them

by Nicolas Mathieu

  “So long,” he said.

  Steph raised her hand in farewell. It had lasted so long, been growing inside him. For a lifetime, pretty much. Once again, he saw her ponytail on a July day. He saw her silhouette one last time, framed by the door, which then closed. He would never touch her breasts again.

  * * *

  —

  Before starting the motorcycle, he carefully rolled it away from the house. Then he pressed the starter, and the motor obeyed. Mechanisms were reliable, at least. Each element performed a precise function, of majestic simplicity. A spark lit the gas-air mixture. The combustion powered the piston, which rose and fell, and in turn organized intake, combustion, and exhaust. Fresh gases drove out the burned ones. The movement repeated, faster, stronger, tireless. A perfect cycle. Provided the mechanism ran and the gasoline flowed, you could produce nonstop energy this way, and speed, and forgetfulness, to infinity.

  Anthony rode around in the Heillange night for a while. Then he decided to stash the bike in the garage at his place. As he closed the metal door, he thought he should swing by his cousin’s before going to work, to retrieve the Clio. A pain in the ass. Unless he went there by motorcycle. He would see.

  Then he went up to his apartment. He found the bottle of Label 5, poured himself a big glass, took two ice cubes from the freezer tray and swirled them around. Everything was quiet. The ice cubes tinkled. In the living room, light from the outside cast pale lozenges on the leather sofa. He looked out. Cars with a few years on them were parked in the comfort of the streetlights. The building was full of its inhabitants’ sleep. They were waiting for the alarm clock to ring. Anthony turned on the hi-fi. On the radio, a woman was wondering what her life would have been like if she had been a captain. The whiskey was lousy, he poured himself another one. The pain had something delectable about it. He felt detached. In the middle of things. His mouth narrowed to a bitter slit. He looked at his watch. He would be starting work in three hours. He was due to have dinner with his mother. Gordon was closing completely between July 14 and August 15. He had no plans for the vacation, nothing he wanted to do. “It’s over,” he told himself. He felt relieved of any obligation.

  Anthony walked into the bathroom to take a shower. Once undressed, he looked at his reflection in the big mirror above the sink. Then he ran the water, very hot. He shook himself under the scalding jet, opening his mouth, running his fingers through his thick black hair. He stood there for a long time, until the water ran warm, then cool. Steph left a physical void. He could feel it in his chest, in his belly. Life would go on. That was the hardest part. Life would go on.

  He went to bed still wet and immediately fell asleep.

  5

  The next day, Anthony decided to take the bus to work. He was late but probably wouldn’t be the only one. Crossing the Gordon parking lot, he noticed that quite a few of the spaces were still empty. He walked over to his workshop without hurrying. He was feeling wooly, despite the two aspirins he took when he got up. His legs were heavy, and his head felt like it was caught in a vice. Yet it was a beautiful morning. The sky was the kind of blue you saw over Sicily. Birds were singing and it was warm. Along the way, Anthony saw girls in skirts, mothers with strollers, garbage collectors picking up the remains of the party. He expected to see Hacine pop up at any moment. He could practically sense his presence and was almost disappointed not to find him at the bus stop when he arrived. After all, Hacine knew where he worked.

  At the stacking station Anthony found his workmates in a great mood. Their faces looked drawn, but radiant. They were all thinking of last night’s game, which had sent France to the final. The kind of heaviness that usually weighed on the workshops had completely evaporated. Not that this energy made them work any faster, however. The trick at work is to maintain a steady pace without going overboard, because if you do, the targets will be raised the following month, and that way, bit by bit, a little pressure here and there, a production bonus after management tightens the screws, and you find yourself trapped in the machine, fleeced and devoured. Foremen were constantly wandering around, looking casual, hunting for downtime and hidden sloth. They knew the strategy of minimal work, but couldn’t prove anything. The workers’ ruse was to work continuously, but with a studied slowness and economy, creating tiny pauses, a breath between two movements, little breaks, quietly getting ahead of schedule, the better to ease off later, and always clandestinely. From this constant fiddling and the bosses’ snooping around the workshops emerged a feeling of ongoing mistrust and seamless solidarity. And woe to the blockhead who worked too hard.

  At break time, the game was replayed around the coffee machine. Martinet was especially enthusiastic. He kept saying that he’d never seen anything like it, ever. Old Schlinger didn’t agree, and trotted out his expertise: Mexico, Kopa, Piantoni, Fontaine, and so on, back to the Stone Age.

  “You’re la Fontaine, with those fables of yours,” said le Zouk.

  That was vintage le Zouk, to come out with a laconic crack just when he seemed to be asleep on a bucket in his corner. His brows had been busted a couple of times, along with his nose. His face looked oddly chewed up, and you could hardly see his eyes. At twenty-five, he looked forty. The fact that he smoked ten joints a day didn’t much help his looks. Still, he was funny, in an inappropriate, unimaginative way.

  The conversation continued. For once, the supervisors and foremen joined the workers. Everybody felt that Lilian Thuram deserved a medal and had entered French history, somewhere between Napoleon and Platini. They also discussed the game’s prize money and Ronaldo’s health problems. Brazil would be tough to beat, but South American teams rarely won a World Cup outside their hemisphere. Anyway, with Zinedine Zidane, France could do anything. You just had to believe. Karim wondered what could be in the big black notebook that manager Aimé Jacquet carried with him everywhere. Stats, for sure, but maybe also secret formulas and magic spells. Jacquet had once worked in a factory, too, a Saint-Chamond steel mill. Just goes to show, said Cyril, briefly melancholic. The bell rang, like at school, and it was time to go back to work. Anthony hadn’t said a word. Martinet was concerned.

  “You okay?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Oh, all right then.”

  The men went back to work with a spring in their step. On that day, things felt easier, temporary. Only Anthony seemed in a bad mood. Nobody gave a damn.

  * * *

  —

  In the canteen, they went at it again. To eat there, you had to buy tickets: red for food, blue for wine. Each person was entitled to ten blue tickets a month, and you needed four to get a bottle of wine. This was the tactic management had found to limit the damage. At one point they tried to forbid the sale of alcohol, but that caused such an outcry they had to fall back on the ticket method.

  On this day, the guys all pooled their wine tickets and snatched up every available bottle. An incredible din reigned all through lunch. People were laughing, talking, waving their arms. Sunday would be the big day. Predictions were flying. Nobody imagined France losing. It just wasn’t possible anymore. The age of miracles had begun. As proof, Karim stood on a chair and started singing “La Marseillaise.” All the workers joined in, mainly for fun, and the song made an unbearable, quasi-revolutionary racket. It was basically goofing around in the guise of patriotism, a good way to mess with the executives off eating in their corner.

  Anthony didn’t join the singing. He didn’t touch his glass of wine and quickly ate his lunch: beef, carrots, potatoes. He had a chocolate Danette for dessert. It had the taste of childhood. When he was a kid, his mother always bought Danettes, chocolate for him and coffee for his father. Except that the old man ate his two at a time, and when he went through his supply he fell back on the chocolate ones. Anthony remembered the three of them sharing those meals. Years of loving each other without saying anything, then hating each other, likewise. It all came d
own to the same thing in the end. His father was dead. As for his mother, she was remaking her life. She was seeing men. She had spiky auburn hair now. She would be able to retire in fifteen years, if the government didn’t lay an egg before then. It was a long way off. She was counting the days. On the weekend, she saw her sister. She visited her girlfriends.

  Amazing, the number of single women who had finally decided to live it up. They went on outings, signed up for organized trips. Buses crisscrossing Alsace and the Black Forest were full of singles, widows, and abandoned women. They did their laughing among their own kind now, stuffing themselves at inns with exposed beams and prix fixe menus, cheese and gourmet coffee included. They visited castles and typical villages, organized karaoke evenings, chipped in to kitties for trips to the Balearic Islands. Children and men had merely been an episode in their lives. These women were the first of their kind to break free of millennial servitudes. Amazons in Capri pants, they were modest, cheerful, careful about their looks, with dyed hair and asses they felt were too big, and a desire to enjoy life, which after all was too short. They were daughters of proles, girls who grew up listening to yé-yé music and went out and got salaried jobs in huge numbers. They were now treating themselves to a good time after a lifetime of worry and penny pinching.

  Nearly all of them had experienced multiple pregnancies and spouses who had been fired, depressed, violent, macho, unemployed, or compulsively humiliated. With their lugubrious faces, big hands, and crushed hearts, these men had been a burden for years, at the dinner table, at the bistro, and in bed. They’d been inconsolable since their famous factories closed and the blast furnaces fell silent. Even the nice ones, the attentive fathers, the good guys, the quiet, obedient ones. All those men, or nearly all of them, were buried now. The sons had generally turned out badly, too, screwing up and causing no end of worry before finding a reason to settle down, very often a girl. During all this time the women had held on, enduring and mistreated. And things had finally started to turn around after the great chasm of the crisis. Except that the crisis wasn’t just a moment anymore. It was a position in the order of things. A destiny. Their destiny.

  As it happens, Anthony was due to see his mother that evening. She always did her shopping on Thursday, so they had a standing date to meet at the Leclerc cafeteria around seven o’clock. It was clean, and steak with fries cost twenty francs. Anthony would have a split of Rhône wine and floating islands. He and Hélène had settled on this arrangement to avoid their domestic arguments. The moment Anthony showed up at his mom’s, she immediately reverted to mother-wolf mode. She gave him advice, wanted to run his life, made scenes. Standing his ground, Anthony said no to everything and provoked her. At Leclerc, at least, they had to behave themselves. They took turns paying the bill. Smoking wasn’t allowed at the table, so after coffee they had a cigarette out in the parking lot. Hélène talked a lot. Her voice was hoarse, her teeth yellowed. Withered circles under her eyes held the memory of past sorrows. Nowadays, she didn’t worry so much. Her kid was settled, her husband in the grave. The men who went with her now knew right away what to expect. She was calm.

  * * *

  —

  After dessert, Anthony stood up and left the canteen without waiting for anyone. The other guys wondered what was up with him.

  “He’s never satisfied.”

  “That’s temps for you,” said old Schlinger.

  “You’re the temp,” said le Zouk, who himself was dispatched by Manpower.

  Anthony smoked a cigarette in the parking lot between the canteen and his workshop. The heat had shot up during lunch, and the air shimmered over the car hoods. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes to go. The tobacco had an acid taste. His hands were damp, his nails filthy. He was having trouble keeping it together. And there was that lurking anxiety: Hacine was coming; it was just a matter of time. Anthony was even surprised that he wasn’t already there. He didn’t have the slightest idea of what he would do then. All this had been going on for so long. He was tired, that’s all.

  Soon his workmates trooped out of the canteen, weighted down with alcohol, already distinctly less chipper than before. They dragged their feet across the gravel lot, sniffing. Two more hours to go. No AC in the workshops. But they buckled down to work anyway. The morning’s joy was already unraveling. The three o’clock break was marked by yawns and silence. The coffee machine gurgled nonstop. People talked about vacations. Cyril was off that evening; he planned to take the kids to his in-laws’ in the Jura. He had stuff to fix at home, wallpaper to hang. Then they’d all go to the seaside; it would do them good.

  * * *

  —

  The two last hours of the day were the longest, stretching on in leaden silence. At last, the guys on the night shift showed up. When Anthony was about to check out, he realized that he was two hours short, from being late so often. When you work three eight-hour days, it’s impossible to catch up. He was in for a salary deduction and a stiff note from human resources. The temp agency would chew him out. He felt his gut tighten. He was already living on the razor’s edge as it was. He earned seven thousand francs a month. His rent took half of that, then he had the car, gas, cigarettes, groceries, and various credit charges; four thousand francs, all told. So every month ended with him overdrawn by at least five hundred francs. And all it took was one mistake, a meal out or too many drinks at a bar, and he was deeper in the hole without any hope of getting out. On payday, he would settle up and promise himself to be careful, to tighten his belt. But the money disappeared very quickly and he was soon down to zero, then overdrawn again. He had worked things out with the bank to avoid charges, but his autonomy was still constantly at risk. For twenty days a month, he lived on his banker’s generosity. So he kept going back to work, day after day. He had to pay for the car somehow, along with the fridge, the bed, the leather sofa, and the new forty-inch Sony TV.

  * * *

  —

  Riding the bus home, Anthony had an odd feeling. There weren’t any crowds. A lot of people had left on vacation. Traffic was smooth, the air warm. Two old ladies right in front of him were chatting. Absentmindedly, he listened to their talk. It was about tomatoes that didn’t grow the way they used to, frosts that didn’t come on schedule. The bus made its way across town one stop at a time: Pont-de-Lattre, Rue-Combes, Hôtel-de-Ville, Piscine-Debecker, Collège-Louis-Armand, Route-d’Étange. He got off at Trois-Épis. It was a bit far from his place, but he felt like walking. The light at day’s end was restful, diffuse. He walked along carrying his backpack, not thinking of anything. He realized he was feeling good.

  When he got home, he phoned his mother to tell her about an idea that had occurred to him.

  “Do you remember the Déchetterie, the beach where my cousin and I used to go all the time?”

  “Yes, so?”

  “I was thinking we could eat there.”

  “Have a picnic?”

  “Yeah.”

  His mother was undecided for a moment. This kind of initiative wasn’t like him.

  “Okay, why not?”

  “Do you have anything to eat?” he asked.

  “Sure. I have some leftover tabouli and chicken thighs.”

  “I’ll get us chips and something to drink.”

  “All right…There’s nothing going on, is there?”

  “No, no,” said Anthony. “Don’t worry.”

  Hélène hung up first. Anthony was pleased by the effect he’d had on her. He put tumblers, a bottle of rosé, chips, and a chocolate bar in his backpack. Then he went to the garage and swung aboard Hacine’s Suzuki. Starting it, he savored the wonderful crackling sound of mechanical lace, as sharp as daggers. He let it warm up for a moment. He had come to a decision. Later that evening he would leave the motorcycle in front of the Darty in Lameck where Hacine worked, and drop the keys in the store’s mailbox. Simplest thing in the world. He would wal
k home, or hitch. He got under way.

  Evening was falling on the valley as he raced through the woods, arms wide, legs spread. The trees zipped by in a changing, staccato parade. July was a beatitude that he dove into headfirst, pained and safe, just barely twenty, deep in speed, where he belonged. He accelerated, and the Suzuki’s irritating whine slashed the light, opalescent air.

  In spite of it all, Anthony felt free.

  He found his mother waiting for him on the beach. She had set out paper plates on a checked cloth. A big bowl covered with tinfoil held the tabouli; the chicken thighs were in a Tupperware container. She had even thought to bring paper napkins. Anthony parked nearby. A little farther down by the water, a small group of kids had gathered around a fire. They were what? Fifteen, sixteen years old? Three girls, five boys, some beers and a guitar.

  “What’s that motorcycle?” asked Hélène.

  Anthony kissed her, then took off his sneakers and sat down.

  “A friend loaned it to me.”

  “I see.”

  One of the kids had started to play “No Woman, No Cry.” Anthony uncorked the wine bottle. A little way below them, the lake spread its depths and its mystery.

  “Cheers.”

  “Your health.”

  They drank. Hélène looked at her son with an expression both affectionate and suspicious, as if she expected to be told secrets, an announcement—something important.

  “So, then?”

  “What?”